The Missouri Mule Hunter

 

Photo by Montana Department of Fish and Game

Just before my 14th birthday I went elk hunting with my dad and my great uncle in a mountainous area south of Bozeman, Montana. The area has now been desecrated by the Big Sky Ski Resort but in 1965 it was pristine mountain habitat

Where I hunted elk in 1965 has been "improved" and now looks like this

We camped by a rock-strewn stream, a tributary of the Gallatin River, where I caught my first cutthroat trout although most of our time was devoted to hunting. Each morning after breakfast and coffee I was given a topographic map and a compass, instructed on which ridge line to hunt, and told not to get lost.

The appropriately-named Cutthroat Trout. Photo by US Geological Survey

After a week in the mountains we left our camp empty handed although I did see my lifer Dusky Grouse. On the way back to my great uncle’s ranch we stopped at a Montana Fish and Game Department hunter check station to see if others had better luck than us.

There is a very good reason the colloquial name for Dusky Grouse is "Fool Hen".

As we looked at someone’s bull elk, a car with Missouri license plates pulled in. Attached to his roof was a fully dressed out hoofed animal containing a tag identifying his quarry as a cow elk. What he had shot and prepared to haul back to Missouri was a mule.

Nearly 60 years later I remain amazed that someone could misidentify a mule in a farm field and think it was a cow elk!

I wish Montana Fish and Game hadn’t told him about his mistake and instead let him take it home and cook a couple steaks. His view of eating “elk” likely would have changed